The fundamental aim of the world of labour in
struggle is the foundation, by means of revolution, of a free and equal
communist society founded on the principle "from each according to his
ability, to each according to his needs".

However, this society will not come about of its
own, only by the power of social upheaval. Its realisation will come about by a
social revolutionary process, more or less drawn out, orientated by the
organised forces of victorious labour in a determined path.

It is our task to indicate this path from this
moment on, and to formulate positive, concrete problems that will occur to
workers from the first day of the social revolution, the outcome of which
depends upon their correct solution.

It is self-evident that the building of the new
society will only be possible after the victory of the workers over the
bourgeois-capitalist system and over its representatives. It is impossible to
begin the building of a new economy and new social relations while the power of
the state defending the regime of enslavement has not been smashed, while
workers and peasants have not seized, as the object of the revolution, the
industrial and agricultural economy.

Consequently, the very first social revolutionary
task is to smash the statist edifice of the capitalist system, to expropriate
the bourgeoisie and in general all privileged elements of the means of power,
and establish overall the will of the workers in revolt, as expressed by
fundamental principles of the social revolution. This aggressive and destructive
aspect of the revolution can only serve to clear the road for the positive tasks
which form the meaning and essence of the social revolution-

These tasks are as follows:

The solution, in the libertarian communist
sense, of the problem of industrial production of the country.

The solution similarly of the agrarian
problem.

The solution of the problem of consumption.

Production

Taking note of the fact that the country's
industry is the result of the result of the efforts of several generations of
workers, and that the diverse branches of industry are tightly bound together,
we consider all actual production as a single workshop of producers, belonging
totally to all workers together, and to no one in particular.

The productive mechanism of the country is global
and belongs to the whole working class. This thesis determines the character and
the forms of the new production. It will also be global, common in the sense
that the products produced by the workers will belong to all. These products, of
whatever category - the general fund of provisions for the workers - where each
who participates in production will receive that which he needs, on an equal
basis for everybody.

The new system of production will totally
supplant the bureaucracy and exploitation in all their forms and establish in
their place the principle of brotherly co-operation and workers' solidarity.

The middle class, which in a modem capitalist
society exercises intermediary functions, commerce etc., as well as the
bourgeoisie, must take part in the new mode of production on the same conditions
as all other workers. If not, these classes place themselves outside the society
of labour.

There will be no bosses, neither entrepreneur,
owner or state-appointed owner (as is the case today in the Bolshevik state).
Management will pass on this new production to the administration especially
created by the workers: workers' soviets, factory committees or workers'
management of works and factories. These organs, interlinked at the level of
commune, district and finally general and federal management of production.
Built by the masses and always under their control and influence, all these
organs constantly renewed and realise the idea of self-management, real
self-management, by the masses of the people.

Unified production, in which the means and
products belong to all, having replaced bureaucracy by the principle of
brotherly co-operation and and having established equal rights for all work,
production managed by the organs of workers' control, elected by the masses,
that is the first practical step on the road to the realisation of libertarian
communism.

Consumption

This problem will appear during the revolution in
two ways:

The principle of the search for products and
consumption.

The principle of their distribution.

In that which concerns the distribution of
consumer goods, the solution depends above all on the quantity of products
available and on the principle of the agreement of targets.

The social revolution concerning itself with the
reconstruction of the whole social order, takes on itself as well, the
obligation to satisfy everyone's necessities of life. The sole exception is the
group of non-workers - those who refuse to take part in the new production for
counter-revolutionary reasons. But in general, excepting the last category of
people, the satisfaction of the needs of everyone in the area of the revolution
is assured by the general reserve of consumer goods. In the case of insufficient
goods, they are divided according to the principle of the greatest urgency, that
is to say in the first case to children, invalids and working families.

A far more difficult problem is that of
organising the basis of consumption itself.

Without doubt, from the first day of the
revolution, the farms will not provide all the products vital to the life of the
population. At the same time, peasants have an abundance which the towns lack.

The libertarian communists have no doubt about
the mutualist relationship which exists between the workers of the town and
countryside. They judge that the social revolution can only be realised by the
common efforts of workers and peasants. In consequence, the solution to the
problem of consumption in the revolution can only be possible by means of close
revolutionary collaboration between these two categories of workers.

To establish this collaboration, the urban
working class having seized production must immediately supply the living needs
of the country and strive to furnish the everyday products the means and
implements for collective agriculture. The measures of solidarity manifested by
the workers as regards the needs of the peasants, will provoke from them in
return the same gesture, to provide the produce of their collective labour for
the towns.

Worker and peasant co-operatives will be the
primary organs assuring the towns and countryside their requirements in food and
economic materials. later, responsible for more important and permanent
functions, notably for supplying everything necessary for guaranteeing and
developing the economic and social life of the workers and peasants, these
co-operatives will be transformed into permanent organs for provisioning towns
and countryside.

This solution to the problem of provisioning
permits the proletariat to create a permanent stock of provision, which will
have a favourable and decisive effect on the outcome of all new production.

The land

In the solution of the agrarian question, we
regard the principal revolutionary and creative forces to be the working
peasants who do not exploit the labour of others, and the wage earning
proletariat of the countryside. Their task will be to accomplish the re-distribution
of land in the countryside in order to establish the use and exploitation of the
land on communist principles.

Like industry, the land, exploited and cultivated
by successive generations of labourers, is the product of their common effort.
It also belongs to all working people and to none in particular inasmuch as it
is the inalienable and common property of the labourers, the land can never
again be bought, nor sold, nor rented: it can therefore not serve as a means of
the exploitation of others' labour.

The land is also a sort of popular and communal
workshop, where the common people produce the means by which they live. But it
is the kind of workshop where each labourer (peasant) has, thanks to certain
historical conditions, become accustomed to carrying out his work alone,
independent of other producers. Whereas, in industry the collective method of
work is essential and the only possible way in our times, the majority of
peasants cultivate the land on their own account.

Consequently, when the land and the means of its
exploitation are taken over by the peasants, with no possibility of selling or
renting, the question of the forms of the utilisation of it and the methods of
its exploitation (communal or by family) will not immediately find a complete
and definite solution, as it will in the industrial sector. Initially both of
these methods will probably be used.

It will be the revolutionary peasants who
themselves will establish the definitive term of exploitation and utilisation of
the land. No outside pressure is possible in this question.

However, since we consider that only a communist
society, in whose name after all the social revolution. will be made, delivers
labourers from their position of slavery and exploitation and gives them
complete liberty and equality; since the peasants constitute the vast majority
of the population (almost 85% in Russia in the period under discussion) and
consequently the agrarian regime which they establish will be the decisive
factor in the destiny of the revolution; and since, lastly, a private economy in
agriculture leads, as in private industry, to commerce, accumulation, private
property and the restoration of capital, our duty will be to do everything
necessary, as from now, to facilitate the solution of the agrarian question in a
collective way.

To this end we must, as from now, engage in
strenuous propaganda among the peasants in favour of collective agrarian
economy.

The founding of a specifically libertarian
peasant union will considerably facilitate this task.

In this respect, technical progress will be of
enormous importance, facilitating the evolution of agriculture and also the
realisation of communism in the towns, above all in industry. If, in their
relations with the peasants, the industrial workers act, not individually or in
separate groups, but as an immense communist collective embracing all the
branches of industry; if, in addition, they bear in mind the vital needs of the
countryside and if at the same time they supply each village with things for
everyday use, tools and machines for the collective exploitation of the lands,
this will impel the peasants towards communism in agriculture.

The defence of the revolution:

The question of the defence of the revolution is
also linked to the problem of "the first day". Basically, the most
powerful means for the defence of the revolution is the happy solution of its
positive problems: production, consumption, and the land. Once these problems
are correctly solved, no counter-revolutionary will be able to alter or
unbalance the free society of workers. Nevertheless the workers will have to
sustain a severe struggle against the enemies of the revolution, in order to
maintain its concrete existence.

The social revolution, which threatens the
privileges and the very existence of the non-working classes of society, will
inevitably provoke a desperate resistance on behalf of these classes, which will
take the form of a fierce civil war.

As the Russian experience showed, such a civil
war will not be a matter of a few months, but of several years.

However joyful the first steps of the labourers
at the beginning of the revolution, the ruling classes will retain an enormous
capacity to resist for a long time. For several years they will launch
offensives against the revolution, trying to reconquer the power and privileges
of which they were deprived.

A large army, military techniques and strategy,
capital - will all be thrown against the victorious labourers.

In order to preserve the conquests of the
revolution, the labourers should create organs for the defence of the
revolution, so as to oppose the reactionary offensive with a fighting force
corresponding to the magnitude of the task. In the first days of the revolution,
this fighting force will be formed by all armed workers and peasants. But this
spontaneous armed force will only be valuable during the first days, before the
civil war reaches its highest point and the two parties in struggle have created
regularly constituted military organisations.

In the social revolution the most critical moment
is not during the suppression of Authority, but following, that is, when the
forces of the defeated regime launch a general offensive against the labourers,
and when it is a question of safeguarding the conquests under attack. The very
character of this offensive, just as the technique and development of the civil
war, will oblige the labourers to create determined revolutionary military
contingents. The essence and fundamental principles of these formations must be
decided in advance. Denying the statist and authoritarian methods of government,
we also deny the statist method of organising the military forces of the
labourers, in other words the principles of a statist army based on obligatory
military service. Consistent with the fundamental positions of libertarian
communism, the principle of voluntary service must be the basis of the military
formations of labourers. The detachments of insurgent partisans, workers and
peasants, which led the military action in the Russian revolution, can be cited
as examples of such formations.

However, "voluntary service" and the
action of partisans should not be understood in the narrow sense of the word,
that is as a struggle of worker and peasant detachments against the local enemy,
unco-ordinated by a general plan of operation and each acting on its own
responsibility, at its own risk. The action and tactics of the partisans in the
period of their complete development should be guided by a common revolutionary
strategy.

As in all wars, the civil war cannot be waged by
the labourers with success unless they apply the two fundamental principles of
all military action: unity in the plan of operations and unity of common
command. The most critical moment of the revolution will come when the
bourgeoisie march against the revolution in organised force. This critical
moment obliges the labourers to adopt these principles of military strategy.

Thus, in view of the necessities imposed by
military strategy and also the strategy of the counter-revolution the armed
forces of the revolution should inevitably be based on a general revolutionary
army with a common command and plan of operations. The following principles form
the basis of this army:

the class character of the army;

voluntary service (all coercion will be
completely excluded from the work of defending the revolution);

free revolutionary discipline
(self-discipline) (voluntary service and revolutionary self-discipline are
perfectly compatible, and give the revolutionary army greater morale than
any army of the State);

the total submission of the revolutionary
army to the masses of the workers and peasants as represented by the
worker and peasant organisations common throughout the country,
established by the masses in the controlling sectors of economic and
social life.

In other words, the organ of the defence of the
revolution, responsible for combating the counter-revolution. on major military
fronts as well as on an internal front (bourgeois plots, preparation for
counter-revolutionary action) will be entirely under the jurisdiction of the
productive organisations of workers and peasants to which it will submit, and by
which it will receive its political direction.

Note: while it should be conducted in
conformity with definite libertarian communist principles, the army itself
should not be considered a point of principle. It is but the consequence of
military strategy in the revolution, a strategic measure to which the labourers
are fatally forced by the very process of the civil war. But this measure must
attract attention as from now. It must be carefully studied in order to avoid
any irreparable set-backs in the work of protecting and defending the
revolution, for set-backs in the civil war could prove disastrous to the outcome
of the whole social revolution.